Even though its latest video shows a zombie baby’s skull being crushed, that will not be the only thing the game has to offer…
We may have written about the Ill story video a few weeks ago. It features eye gouging, skull crushing, zombie baby beatings, and other similar scenes that try to highlight the game’s narrative thread. However, Max Verehin, CEO of Team Clout, the studio developing the game, assured PCGamer that the game does indeed have a story, and that these exaggerated visual elements were partly inspired by one of the most popular horror sequences in video game history: the We Don’t Go to Ravenholm chapter of Half-Life 2. According to Verehin, the narrative element of Ill’s latest video focuses on the game’s characters and mysterious plot, although very little has been revealed so far.
Something unpleasant is happening in the world’s worst hospital, and we have just woken up from a coma, only to be chosen as the janitor. This does not exactly sound like a typical survival horror experience. The similarity to Ravenholm is also there. A gloomy location full of headcrabs and zombies, Ravenholm is a memorable, if somewhat illogical, part of Half-Life 2, but what really makes it work is the combination of the gravity gun and the many conveniently placed circular saw blades that act as a slicing-and-chopping mechanism. It is not as gory as Ill, but it is definitely a much more visceral way to defeat non-human horrors than simply shooting them with conventional firearms.
Technology has advanced significantly in the years since Half-Life 2 was released, and Verehin was asked whether it might have become a little too advanced. According to Verehin, there is no such thing as a game that everyone will like, and based on the enthusiastic feedback to Ill’s YouTube videos, as well as the number of Steam wishlists it has gathered, with SteamDB currently listing it among the top 10 most-wished-for games, he believes they are on the right track.
“Our entire team has extensive experience in the horror genre, including games, movies, art, concept design, and so on. Like many players and audiences in general, we have reached a point where it is quite difficult to surprise us with anything in this genre. When we first came together, our goal was to combine our experience and create a project that would feel fresh and unusual, and that would stand out from the crowd even for us, something that could reignite the raw emotions that have grown somewhat dull over time. That is why, during our initial brainstorming sessions, we try not to hold back, but to be bold and let all our craziness run free. Only after that do we look for balance: how not to cross the line while preserving our uniqueness. We are not trying to include gore for the sake of gore, because our game is not ‘gore porn.’ Its primary goal is to scare and entertain, not merely to shock.
Ill combines horror and action, and since we are fighting monsters rather than real people, we expect tearing them apart to be a fun experience against the backdrop of general, oppressive horror. We often think back to how we felt when we played through Half-Life 2’s We Don’t Go to Ravenholm: how we fought back against the monsters, how we sliced them up with the gravity gun’s saw blades, how we blew them up, and so on. With the technology of that era, it created the perfect emotional impact. Today, the technology is completely different, expectations are higher, and the bar for conveying those same emotions to players has risen. We are doing everything we can to achieve exactly that same effect, but by today’s standards. This audience knows exactly what it wants, what it has been missing all this time, and it perfectly understands what we are trying to achieve. We have a lot more content to share in the future, and players will see more of the elements and mechanics the game offers, which will naturally shape the overall impression,” Verehin said.
Ill is set to be released in 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC.
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